


Mindfulness inspired by Hello Fresh

by Clockwork



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Happily Ever After, Nebulous Time Setting, Sensory prompts, enjoying life, happiness, taking a moment to smell the roses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 20:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18818254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork
Summary: Liz and Max are living happily in that sprawling ranch house of his, and Liz finds she needs a way to relax. So gardening it is. Just to get them to stop buying food boxes so they can cook together.Inspired by the sensory prompts from heir-to-the-diamond-throne on tumblr





	Mindfulness inspired by Hello Fresh

Liz never wore her nails long. Not back in high school. Not during college when she at least went in regularly for manicures, mostly because she liked the pampering she received at the beauty school just down the street from her dorms where they experimented with new things on students who couldn’t half afforded half the treatments if they’d gone to a full service salon. 

After college she had learned quickly that nails shredded latex gloves and it was more important to keep her hands safe and protected than it was to have cute nails. So she kept them short and slightly rounded, clear coated and didn’t really worry about much more than that. 

When her research had shifted even further from where she thought she would be, busy with both her work at the hospital as well as at the private lab that she and Kyle Valenti maintained to continue their research into Max and his family she had found keeping her hands protected doubly important. For now there was only the three of them but between the facility at Caulfield and Noah running lose until his death in the desert, none of them were willing to assume they were all that remained and so research continued.

So did living their lives. Maybe it wasn’t always as easy as it should be, and still there were bumps in the road that they tried to overcome, issues that they often didn’t know how to handle but through trial and error. But with a group of three aliens and three humans, all as concerned about one another’s safety as their own, it was easy to forget about the simple things, about slowing down and existing merely in the moment.

More and more Liz found out that she was having trouble with that aspect of things. Every day, every moment, was go go go and finding time to settle and just enjoy life was getting harder and harder. She had to slow down.

Which would come after she finished building.

It’s not as if it takes much. A few two by fours, a box of nails, hauling all of it from the back of Max’s truck to the area behind their house where she had cleared a space. Maybe it was crazy wanting a garden in the desert, but she’s read enough on terraced gardening and working it out to the area where they live that she knows she can make it work. More importantly, she wants it to work. She just wants a spot where she can come out, and listen to music, and put her hands into something that isn’t blood and guts and while it’s still holding a life in her hands in a way, it’s not the same.

Two days, and two truck loads of haul it yourself soil later, and it’s all set. 

Max has offered to help every time he’s seen Liz out there in a tank and jeans, hammering and sawing, and eventually hauling dirt with a shovel as she stands on the tailgate of the truck, shoveling it down into the raised bed she’s made with her own two hands.

Sure there’s been splinters and stumbles, too much sun and falling asleep immediately as she curls up into Max’s arms, but it’s been worth it in her book. 

Kicking off her sneakers, she steps into the box with a sigh. The dirt is cool against her feet, clumps crumbling with the slightest pressure beneath her heel. Already there are markers and separate boards that mark where each bed will be, seed packets dropped in the area, and Liz sinks down in the first one, feeling the moisture of the soil beneath her knees, soaking the denim.

The sun is still bright even as it sets behind her, the golden glow warm against her back, soothing muscles overworked the last few days. It’s an odd dichotomy between the warm wood, the sun streaming over her, and the cold soil beneath her. Soon the air around her will be just as cool as the sun sets, the temperatures in the desert plummeting with the sun. 

Max would be home soon, and they would open one of those boxes they’ve ordered because while Liz can cook diner food, and Max can bachelor fend for himself, neither of them ever learned how to cook really. But they are now. They are following the recipes, and sharing the chopping and prepping as laid out on the printouts, and then they usually come out front, and Max builds a fire in the pit, and they just enjoy having time for one another. Sharing bites as they compare which they like and don’t like, the flavors that delight each of them. Chasing it down with local craft beers that she keeps picking up, refusing to drink the kind of half assed beer that hipsters pretend to like to be pretentious. They don’t get to do it every night between their jobs, but at least twice a week they share this time together. 

Which is what inspired the garden. Loving working together with Max to make their dinner, and loving the idea now of growing their own foods, using those recipes and learning. Together. 

As a child she had played even then at being a scientist. Liz had never doubted what she wanted to do, the changes she wanted to make. She used sticks to give her stuffed animals shots, and stole napkins from the diner to make bandages. Then she’d moved onto caring for her dolls, to creating new species, and to learning about them from things she made up. 

What she’s doing now is the same thing. Experimenting with that she doesn’t know, the science of it all, until she finds something that works for them. And yet there is a peace there, one that she hasn’t thought she might find in something so simple.

Pushing her hands into the soil, she smiles as she feels the sensation against her fingers. Cool soil turning cold the deeper she pushes. Feeling dirt encase her hands, pushing up under her nails as tiny rocks and twigs scrape against her skin. The smell rises up around her, thick and loamy, earth and manure and something that she always relates to her labs in college. Life and death. The rich, musty scent of blood mingling with the scent of sweet decay. It’s something familiar and yet foreign, different in this way. 

Working the soil slowly but surely, losing herself in the sensation of just turning the soil over, running her fingers through it and letting it fall from her hands like muddy raindrops returning to the earth. The seed packets lay waiting, the recycled water from the sink and tubs stood in barrels nearby, untouched. Somewhere between the satisfaction of finishing the first stages of the project and moving onto the next, Liz had lost herself in exactly what she had thought to find in building the garden to begin with. Peace. Living in the moment. The meditation of connecting with nature. So much so that she hadn’t noticed the sun just barely disappearing behind the horizon, the last brilliance of the day burning off on the horizon in a brilliance of crimson and salmon and fuschia with shades of wisteria and columbine purple streaked through. 

Not noticed the sound of tires over gravel, the creak of metal as the truck came up the lane and stopped in front of the ranch house so far out from the center of Roswell, looking out over desert vistas in every direction. 

“Liz?”

She startled, spinning to face Max’s voice, only then realizing just how dark it had gotten. Not so dark though that he could see the streak of dirt on her cheek, the way it covered her hands and caked under her nails. 

“Did you lose something?”

Sitting there in the dirt, Liz couldn’t help but to laugh as she picked up a handful of dirt, heaving it at Max. 

“Oh, is that so?”

Not even bothering to take off his boots as he dived in after her, tackling her into the soil, kissing her hard. Dinner would wait. So would the planting. The garden in its earliest moments of conception, had served its purpose after all.


End file.
